East Africa has emerged as a hotspot of impact investing activity in recent years. However, two fundamental challenges—one around the matching between investors and enterprises and another around the preparation of enterprises in order to receive investment—are still constraining impact investing volumes (deal flow) in the region. While service providers are well equipped to help enterprises overcome both of these challenges, they themselves face constraints in scaling their models.

FSG’s latest report outlines how donors can increase deal flow in the region by designing a market-responsive intervention that helps to sustainably scale the provision of pre-investment services. Over time, this will help investors find more worthwhile opportunities to distribute their capital and smooth the path for impact enterprises to raise capital and expand their work.

This report has been developed and published with financial support from UK aid from the British people under the Department for International Development’s (DFID) Impact Programme.